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Fantastic Four – Find Your Forte

August 11, 2015 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

 

God on Film:  Fantastic Four – Find Your Forte
Sycamore Creek Church
August 9/10, 2015
Tom Arthur

 

 

Peace friends!

Today we’re continuing in this series, God on Film.  Each week we’re looking at a summer blockbuster and exploring something that movie evokes and what the Bible has to say about it.  Today we’re looking at the movie, Fantastic Four.

So how many are there in the Fantastic Four?  Yep.  Four.  Each one of the four have “unique physical capabilities.”  The Thing has indestructible strength.  Mister Fantastic has the unique physical capability of rubber stretch.  The Human Torch has fire, and the Invisible Woman can turn, well, invisible as well as having the ability to project force fields.

If you got to choose one of those super powers, which one would you pick?  How would you decide?  How did each of the Fantastic Four decide?  They didn’t.  In the original storyline they are hit by cosmic rays in outer space.  In this remake something happens during inter-dimensional travel.  They don’t get to choose what special ability they have.  It just happens to them.

You don’t decide either what special unique capabilities you have.  You just have them.  What are your unique capabilities?  What about your unique spiritual capabilities?  Today I’d like to take a look at the unique spiritual capabilities that each of us are given called spiritual gifts.  Let’s begin with a definition:

Spiritual gifts are God-given natural or supernatural talents every Christian has that God uses to accomplish God’s purposes in and through the church.

That’s a thick definition so let’s unpack it.

God-given = These gifts are by God’s grace freely given.  The Greek word behind the word “gift” is charism which you make recognize in the word “charismatic.” “Charism” means “gift.”  Spiritual gifts are natural or supernatural talents.  Sometimes they are very natural in appearance like knowledge or teaching.  Other times they have a supernatural twist like healing.  Either way they’re what we’re able to do, and what we’re good at doing.  Every Christian has one or more spiritual gifts.  Every person plays a part.  But a part in what?  A part in God’s purposes.  Spiritual gifts are for accomplishing God’s rescue mission to the world.  And God’s rescue mission happens primarily in and through the Church.  Spiritual gifts are for equipping one another and reaching out into the world.  So let’s hear that definition again:

Spiritual gifts are God-given natural or supernatural talents every Christian has that God uses to accomplish God’s purposes in and through the church.

Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible, says:

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.
~1 Corinthians 12:1 NRSV

Paul wants us to know about spiritual gifts so we’re not uninformed or ignorant of our own and God’s purposes for spiritual gifts.  One book that has been helpful to me over the last couple of months is a book by Peter Wagner called Discover Your Spiritual Gifts.  Wagner writes:

“You need to know about your spiritual gifts if

  1. You are a Christian believer
  2. You believe that Jesus is your Lord and you want to love Him, please Him and follow Him in the best way possible; and
  3. You want your church to be a healthy, attractive growing group of people showing forth God’s love in your community.”

I think I want all three of those things.  I suspect that you do too.  So let’s go back to Paul and see what he teaches about Spiritual gifts.  Paul writes about spiritual gifts in several different places but today we’re going to focus on his letter to the Christians who are in Rome.  Here’s what he says:

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him…
~Paul (Romans 12:1 NLT)

Have you ever considered that what you do with your bodies is worship.  Worship isn’t just coming together on Sunday to sing and pray and hear teaching about the Bible.  It’s also about how you use your body every day of the week.  How your body interacts with other bodies around you is an act of worship.

Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.
~Paul (Romans 12:3 NLT)

Paul encourages us to have an honest humble appraisal of ourselves.  You’re good at some things and other things you’re not so good at.  Do you know what they are?  Humility is having an accurate and true self-understanding.  Paul is about to help us have that honest and true and humble self-understanding.

Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.
~Paul (Romans 12:4-5 NLT)

Each of your body parts has a special function.  In the same way, each of you has a special function in the church and the world.  Each of you has a special function in God’s rescue mission to the world.  And just like a human body, the individual body parts belong to each other.

In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well.
~Paul (Romans 12:6 NLT)

These gifts and playing this role in the body is a God-given gift.  It’s not something you earn.  You just have it.  Some things you do well, but not all things.  That’s where the honesty and humility come in.  What do you do well, and what do you not do so well?

So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you.  If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well.  If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.
~Paul (Romans 12:6-8 NLT)

Some of us have the gift of prophesy.  Prophesy isn’t so much about telling the future, although it may be about that.  The prophet in the Bible speaks from God’s perspective about when God’s people are in or out of the will of God.  The rest of the gifts Paul mentions are more natural and obvious gifts: serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, showing kindness.  These all are spiritual gifts that God gives each one of us to accomplish God’s purposes in and through the church.

God’s General & Specific Call
Many people often come to me and want to know what God has called them to do in this world.  Here’s the answer.  God has a general call on each person’s life.  That general call is basically the same for everyone: use your spiritual gifts.  God gave you special talents, and God calls you to use those gifts.  That’s God’s general call.

Then there’s God specific call.  God’s specific call has to do with the specific ministry or area or location that you use those gifts.  Some of you are called to use your gifts working with children.  Others are called to the specific area of youth.  Others are called to use their gifts in worship ministry.  Others are called to use their gifts specifically with preaching or outreach or missions.  In any case, God does not call someone to a ministry that God does not equip that person for doing.  While the specific call may change (where you use your gifts in ministry), the general call does not (that you use your gifts).

Martin Luther, the 16th century Protestant reformer, taught “the priesthood of all believers.”  It’s not that there’s a special profession called “pastor” or “priest” that does all the ministry.  Rather, all who follow Jesus, all who are part of the body of Christ are pastors and priests.  Each one of you has a role to play, not just some “professional Christian” we call the pastor.

How Many Spiritual Gifts are There?
Paul gives us three different lists of spiritual gifts in three different books of the Bible.  Those lists are all different.  I don’t think Paul was trying to be exhaustive when he wrote those lists.  Then there are other places in the Bible where special gifts are listed.  So I don’t think there is any one set list or number of gifts.  One online tool we use at Sycamore Creek Church lists twenty-four gifts.  Peter Wagner’s book lists twenty-eight.  I don’t know what the exact number is, and I’m somewhat skeptical of any attempt to nail down an exact number.  But this morning I want to talk about three of those gifts.

Singleness
The gift of singleness is the gift “to remain single and enjoy it and not suffer undue sexual temptation” (Wagner).  Paul teaches it this way:

But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.
~1 Corinthians 7:7 NLT

It may seem odd to start our conversation with the gift of singleness.  But I am beginning here because the largest group of people in the neighborhood right around our church is a group called “singles and starters.”  Now let’s get very clear about the gift of singleness because sometimes we tell single people something like: “You must have the gift of singleness because you’re single.”  That’s not true.  Being single doesn’t mean you have the gift of singleness.  It may just mean you haven’t yet met your spouse and life-partner.  If you want to get married, you probably don’t have this gift.  If you want to have sex, you probably don’t have this gift.  If you are quite alright being single, then you may have this gift.

The gift of singleness does not stand alone.  Yes, I said that.  Singleness does not stand alone.  We’re not talking about spinsters.  Singleness is a gift that allows a deeper and fuller use of your other gifts that God uses to accomplish God’s purposes in and through the church.  If you are single you have more time and more energy to focus less on your own family and more on the community around you.  Let’s look at one person who had the gift of singleness: Georges Lemaître.

Who was Georges Lemaître?  Georges Lemaître was a brilliant catholic priest in the 20th century.  In 1920 he got his first PhD.  Yes, I said “first.”  It was titled “Approximation of functions of several real variables.”  I have no idea what that means other than that Georges Lemaître was very smart.  He got his PhD in 1920 and then was ordained a priest in 1923.  In 1927 he went head to head with Einstein when he proposed the Expansion Theory of the Universe.  Einstein said, “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious.”  Georges Lemaître became the founder of the Big Bang Theory.  Yes, a Christian priest came up with the Big Bang Theory.  Turns out that while Einstein is more famous, Lemaître was right.  Then in 1931 Lemaître got his second PhD which was titled, “The gravitational field in a fluid sphere of uniform invariant density according to the theory of relativity.”  I don’t understand that any more than I understood the first!

OK, let’s unpack all this just for a moment.  A married man with kids barely has time to finish one PhD let alone two.  A married man with kids doesn’t go head to head with Einstein and win.  A married man with kids doesn’t become a Catholic priest.  Lemaître’s singleness allowed him to focus his time and energy (no pun intended) on advancing humanity’s understanding of the universe’s origins.  His singleness was a gift that allowed him to use his other gifts on a deeper and fuller level.  He enriched others with his gift of singleness.  That’s the gift of singleness.  Singleness allows you to use your other gifts in deeper and fuller ways for the benefit of God’s purposes in and through the church.

Hospitality
Wagner defines hospitality as the ability “to provide an open house and warm welcome for those in need of lodging.”  Peter, one of Jesus’ closest friends taught:

Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.
~1 Peter 4:9 NLT

The person with the gift of hospitality is able to make people feel truly at home whether in their own home or elsewhere.  They also are able to share their home for extended periods of time.  This means be able to share the “mess” without apologizing.  You don’t have to be a Martha Stewart.

Sarah and I have the gift of hospitality.  For most of our married life we have had people living with us.  We’re not alone.  A couple of months ago we invited over for dinner everyone in our church that we know who is sharing their house with someone.  It was good to sit around the table and share stories together.  There are many in our church who have the gift of hospitality.

Of course, one of the ways we are using the gift of hospitality in our church together is through the remodeling of our Connection Café.  Here we hope to make people feel at home and to have a place to build friendships.  Many in our church share their gift of hospitality through our Connection Café.  There will be many more opportunities in the future if we are to open up our Connection Café to the community throughout the week.

One last area of hospitality that takes place together is our shared task of cleaning the building.  While the gift of hospitality as it is played out in our homes may be about sharing the “mess” of our homes with folks, the gift of hospitality as it is played out together in this building is through keeping the building clean.  A clean building removes obstacles from a guest encountering God when they join us for an event in our building.

Pastor
The last gift I want to explore today in details is the gift of pastor.  The gift of pastor “assumes a long-term personal responsibility for the spiritual welfare of a group of believers.”  Again, Peter describes it this way:

Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly
~1 Peter 5:2 NLT

God’s sense of humor is such that I, your pastor, do not have the gift of pastor.  What?  Yes, I don’t have the gift of pastor.  My top gifts tend to be leadership, administration, teaching, and giving.  Peter Wagner says, “Very few senior ministers of large, growing churches do have the biblical gift of pastor.”  This may seem confusing to you until you understand that there is a difference between the role of pastor that we tend to hire for a leader in our church and the spiritual gift of pastor.  I am hired as your pastor to lead this church, and many of you have the gift of pastor to help care for one another.  “As soon as we understand that the gift of pastor is not necessarily what your senior minister has or needs, a vast and exciting possibility is opened for laypeople to begin to exercise the gift of pastor” (Peter Wagner).  Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, says, “For the church to grow, the pastor must give up the ministry and the people must give up the leadership.”  As our church grows more and more of you will begin to exercise your gift of pastor.  I will begin to live more and more into my gift of leadership.

Two examples of where this is already taking place is with Tom Fox and Mary Ziegler.  Tom is a retired United Methodist pastor who is a partner in our church.  He is also a part-time chaplain at Sparrow.  He has been working to develop a hospital visitation team.  This means that when you’re in the hospital, I may not be the person visiting you.  Tom and one of his team members may be that person.  Mary Ziegler is a recently retired partner in our church who has been developing a caring and listening ministry with many of you.  Mary and her team will soon begin offering prayer partners after worship each week.  These are people who will be available to pray with you each week.  Mary, Tom, and their teams are exercising their gift of pastor, and this pastor who does not have the gift of pastor is grateful for them.

Discover Your Spiritual Gifts
There’s only one last question to ask: How do you discover your spiritual gifts?  I want to give you four tips for discovering your spiritual gifts.  First, use TOOLS.  We offer an online inventory that you can take.  Visit www.assessme.org/2364.aspx and you’ll find four inventories: a spiritual gifts inventory, a personality inventory, a leadership inventory, and a skills inventory.  If you paid for this yourself, it would cost you $15, but if you do it through us, it’s FREE!  Once you’ve taken all four you’ll be given a customized report with suggestions for how to use your gifts.  You’ll also be added to a searchable database that the leadership of our church can use to help you find the right place to use your spiritual gifts.  This is a helpful tool, but let’s remember, it’s just a tool.  It isn’t perfect.  That’s why you need these other three tips.

Second, TRY different ministries.  Don’t feel like you have to get stuck in one area of volunteering.  Try one out for a couple of months and then try another.  You don’t have to stick with just one.  We offer a Serve Interest Inventory and many “first-serve opportunities” when big events happen at SCC.  These are ways you can try different ministries on for size.

Third, TALK to people who know you.  Take your assessme.org results and talk to a trusted Christian friend.  What seems right?  What seems off?  What is missing or confusing?  Talk to more than one person.  Test what you know about yourself with what others know about you.

Lastly, TAKE it to God.  Spend time in prayer asking God to show you what your gifts are and to help you find the right place to use those gifts.  God is the giver of the gifts.  God has a vested interest in you knowing what those gifts are and using them.

When You Know and Use Your Spiritual Gifts
Three things happens when you know your spiritual gifts.  First, you grow.  You have a healthy self-esteem.  Your picture of yourself is accurate and humble.  You begin to take initiative rather than waiting to be asked.  Your thankfulness for God’s work in and through you grows.  And your confidence grows as God’s ever growing specific calling grows in responsibility and scope.

Second, when you know and use your spiritual gifts, the church grows.  Other Christians’ gifts are supported by your gift.  There is health in the full body.  All the systems are working together to accomplish God’s purposes.  Non-Christians are attracted by the health they see and experience in our church.

Third, God is glorified.  When you know and use your spiritual gifts, you offer your bodies as an act of worship.  And now we’re back to where we began.

“This is truly the way to worship God.”
~Paul (Romans 12:1 NLT)

God help us to know and use our gifts so that we each grow, our church grows, and you are glorified.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Committed to Christ – Serve

April 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment

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Committed to Christ – Serve
Sycamore Creek Church
April 13/14, 2014
Tom Arthur
John 13:3-15

Peace friends!

How’s your serve?  I don’t mean your tennis serve.  I mean your commitment to serve God in the church, community, and world?

Today we wrap up a series called Committed to Christ.  For the last six weeks we’ve been preparing for Easter by looking at our commitments to follow Jesus.  Today we look at our commitment to serve.

Back in February we took an anonymous survey asking you about your various commitments.  We asked you about your commitment to serve and here’s what we found:

Do you serve the Lord with your time and talents?

2 – No, I’ve never given any time to serve God.
14 – Yes, I do give my time, but only when directly asked to.
22 – Yes, I take the initiative, searching for opportunities
14 – Yes, about one hour a week
9 – Yes, about three to five hours a week.
12 – Yes, I give time to serve God every single day.
2 – Yes, I give a tithe (10%) of my time to serve the Lord.

Today it’s my hope that each one of us would take a further step in faithfully serving God and others in our church, community, and world.  One very practical opportunity you’re going to have to serve is this Thursday.  This Thursday is traditionally called “Maundy Thursday.”  Maundy Thursday is the day before Easter when the church remembers the mandate, thus “Maundy”, that Jesus gave his disciples to love those around them in service.  He not only told them this but he showed them what this looked like by washing their feet, a dirty nasty job in a day and age when there were no socks or pavement and everyone walked around in sandals, here’s the story as Jesus’ follower, John told it:

John 13:3-6 & 12-15 NRSV
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him…

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 

Today it doesn’t make a lot of sense to wash people’s feet.  So to celebrate Jesus’ washing his disciples feet we’re going to gather at the local Quality Dairy Laundromat to hand out free quarters and laundry detergent to wash people’s clothes.  It’s a simple but powerful witness to Jesus’ command to love one another through service.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at serving with our treasure, testimony and temple.  Because next week is Easter, it’s worth just taking a moment and asking this question: how is investing and inviting three people to Easter going?  That’s part of what it means to serve  through your testimony.  You share with others how you have encountered God in the resurrection and worship at SCC and how that encounter has changed you and sent you in mission to the world.

Serving with your Time
What about serving with your time?  We talk about tithing our treasure or money to God or giving 10% back to God.  What would it mean to tithe your time?  Have you ever considered that?  That would be a big commitment, right?  2.4 hours/day in service to God in our church, community, and world!  Or maybe you just want to count waking hours.  If you get seven to eight hours of a sleep a tithe on your waking hours would be about 1.5 hours/day.

Below is a list of all the ways you can serve the church, community and world at SCC.  When it comes to giving of your time, I’d like to suggest you take an experimental approach.  Try something out for three months.  You don’t have to commit your entire life to it.  Just give it a try and see how it goes.  Reevaluate and then readjust your time commitments.

Serving with your Talents
What are you good at?  What talents has God given you?  One way to explore that is through an online assessment tool we use called Assessme.org.  Assessme.org gives you four inventories to help you find how God has uniquely gifted you in your personality, leadership style, spiritual gifts, and skills.  Take about twenty minutes and learn something about yourself here:
www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.

Here are my results.  When it comes to my leadership style I’m highest in administration, strategic, and pioneering leadership.  I’m weakest in team, encouraging, and pastoral leadership.  In other words, I tend to be pretty task oriented rather than relational oriented.

 

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Here are the results of my epersonality test.  I’m a planner.  My personality leans toward being independent rather than social, I am an abstract thinker rather than concrete, I lean toward my head or intellect more than my heart, and I’m a systematic thinker rather than an adaptive thinker.  This makes me a good “planner.”

TArthurPersonality

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to my grace gifts, I’m gifted in stewardship which is not just about money but also about people.  I like teaching.  I also am a giver and a leader.  I’m gifted with the talents of administration and making disciples or followers of Jesus.

 

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What are your talents when it comes to your personality, leadership style, and grace gifts?

A Service Autobiography
I’d like to put some flesh on these graphs by sharing with you my own service autobiography.  How did I end up right here right now?  How did I end up serving Jesus by serving the church as a pastor?  How did I end up with the unique set of talents and passions that I have as a pastor?  Here’s my story, or at least part of it.

Growing up in what is sometimes called the “holiness tradition.”  In the holiness tradition there’s a particular emphasis on avoiding sin.  “Sin” in the holiness tradition means personal purity.  So we were encouraged not to curse, smoke, drink, use drugs, have sex outside of marriage, listen to secular music, date non-Christian girls, or do anything “unedifying.”  Christian maturity in the tradition I grew up in was primarily about avoiding personal sins of impurity.

One thing that was highly emphasized in the holiness tradition was reading your Bible.  Reading your Bible can be a dangerous activity.  As I began reading my Bible more and more I began to see that God wasn’t only interested in personal sins of purity.  God was also interested in social sins.  Or you could say that God was not just interested in personal holiness but also in social holiness.  Let me give you and example of this kind of thinking in the Bible. It comes from the prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 58:1-9 NLT
1 “Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast.
    Shout aloud! Don’t be timid.
Tell my people Israel of their sins!
2     Yet they act so pious!
They come to the Temple every day
    and seem delighted to learn all about me.
They act like a righteous nation
    that would never abandon the laws of its God.
They ask me to take action on their behalf,
    pretending they want to be near me.
3 ‘We have fasted before you!’ they say.
    ‘Why aren’t you impressed?
We have been very hard on ourselves,
    and you don’t even notice it!’
“I will tell you why!” I respond.
    “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves.
Even while you fast,
    you keep oppressing your workers.
4 What good is fasting
    when you keep on fighting and quarreling?
This kind of fasting
    will never get you anywhere with me.
5 You humble yourselves
    by going through the motions of penance,
bowing your heads
    like reeds bending in the wind.
You dress in burlap
    and cover yourselves with ashes.
Is this what you call fasting?
    Do you really think this will please the Lord?
6 “No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
    lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
    and remove the chains that bind people.
7 Share your food with the hungry,
    and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
    and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
8 “Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
    and your wounds will quickly heal.
Your godliness will lead you forward,
    and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.
9 Then when you call, the Lord will answer.
    ‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply.

This isn’t one isolated place in scripture where God is interested in questions of justice and how we treat the poor.  It’s all over the Bible!  God is interested in our service to him in personal holiness but personal holiness doesn’t mean much to God if we’re not also interested in serving our neighbor in social holiness.  So what is social holiness?  Social holiness is serving God by serving both the spiritual and physical needs of others with our time, talent, treasure, testimony, and “temple” in the church, community and world.

Who do we serve?  We serve God, but we do so by serving our church, community, and world.  What do we serve?  We serve spiritual and physical needs.  How do we serve?  We serve with our time, talent, treasure, testimony and “temple” (our bodies).  Let me give you some examples from my own life.  Watch for some common themes.

In early elementary school I began a hamster breeding business.  It turns out that I was pretty good at breeding hamsters but not necessarily selling them.  Later on I found a better way to make money. I started a lawn mowing business.  I created little business cards and went around to my neighbors and passed them out.  I got three good clients and mowed their yards throughout middle and high school.

While in high school my creativity began to bloom.  I started a Christian radio show on my high school’s radio station, WBDG.  I also won the state competition in radio documentary-making with a documentary I led my team in making on the topic of gangs in Indianapolis.  So began my interest in creative use of media production and communication.  While in high school I also took several classes in photography.  I began to learn how to create images that would communicate to our culture.

Meanwhile my leadership skills began to bloom as I led a before-school prayer meeting.  I would pick up three to five fellow students who would gather at our church to pray for revival in our school.

I graduated 29th out of almost 1000 students in my class.  I enjoyed learning and that expressed itself in the college I chose.  I went to Wheaton College, a small Christian liberal arts school outside of Chicago because it had a strong emphasis on faith and academics.  I began as a Christian education major but switched to psychology.  During a summer internship, I realized that I wasn’t interested in being a counselor and was more interested in the research field of Community Psychology, the arm of psychology that focused on intervention and prevention.  While at Wheaton I also took all the photography classes that Wheaton offered and picked up a photography minor.

During my sophomore year I began to volunteer in the Dearborn Boys club in the projects on the south side of Chicago.  By my junior year I was leading the group of students from Wheaton who went down weekly to build relationships through sports and games with boys in the projects.  The projects on the south side of Chicago are massive.  I learned that if the projects were made their own city, they would be the second largest city in Illinois next to Chicago.  This exposure to poverty was ultimately where I experienced a call to racial and economic reconciliation.  This meant for me helping build friendships across racial and economic barriers.  Rich and poor and black and white becoming friends.

When I graduated from Wheaton I moved to Petoskey, MI and began working at Petoskey United Methodist Church.  While in Petoskey I somehow ended up leading the local ministerial association even though I wasn’t an official minister.  I also ended up founding the Northern Michigan C.S. Lewis Festival.  In its first year, the C.S. Lewis Festival consisted of 19 events put on by 14 groups over the month of November and was attended by 2500 people.  All of this was in a town of 7000.  Even though I am no longer involved, the C.S. Lewis Festival is now in its 11th year and still going strong.

While in Petoskey I volunteered at the local homeless shelter called The Nehemiah House.  While there I met a man named Alex.  Sarah and I had just bought a three bedroom house, and we were only living in one room of it.  We felt like God was calling us to share our house with Alex, so we did.  He still rents from us and lives in our house in Petoskey.

My work at Petoskey United Methodist Church eventually led to a call to become a pastor.  This was a fear-filled calling.  I was afraid that I would be appointed by our bishop to a traditional boring church.  That obviously hasn’t played out yet!  I chose to go to Duke Divinity School because Duke placed a strong emphasis on both personal faith and academics.  At Duke I started the Duke Socratic Club, a debating society that met weekly to debate what we were learning in classes.  We also held public debates between professors at Duke and other professors in the area.  Our first event, a debate between Richard Hayes and Bart Ehrman, got picked up by the state news and over 500 people attended!

When Sarah and I moved to Durham we had to choose a church to attend.  We decided to attend a church that I would likely never be appointed to, so we chose to attend the historically black United Methodist Church in East Durham, Asbury Temple.  At Asbury Temple we met David and Rebecca Arthur, who have the same last name as our family but are of no relation.  David and Rebecca had begun the Isaiah House, a “New Monastic” house in the ghetto of East Durham.  We decided to move into the Isaiah house and join their mission.  Living at the Isaiah house was like living in the local homeless shelter with your small group.  Besides becoming a parent after thirteen years of child-free marriage, there has been nothing more disruptive, challenging, and ultimately powerfully meaningful than living at the Isaiah House.

Before we left Durham, we began a new group called The Order of St. James (OSJ).  OSJ is made up of fellow pastors and their families who want to take the principles of New Monasticism and put them into practice as pastors.  We have three practices that we hold one another accountable to: Simplicity, Hospitality, and Evangelism.

During my last year at Duke Divinity School, I somehow ended up the co-president of the Student Council.  My co-president was a black woman named Nancy who taught me how the world looked from a black woman’s perspective.

Toward the end of my time at Duke, I received a call out of the blue one day from a woman named Barb Flory.  She told me that she had planted a church in Lansing, MI and was retiring.  She had heard about me and wanted to know if I was interested in being appointed by the bishop as the second pastor of Sycamore Creek Church.  I was intrigued by the idea and met with her and the leadership team and the bishop appointed me to be the pastor of SCC.  About a year later, she called me again and wanted to know if I was interested in joining the team of people in West Michigan who plant churches for the United Methodist Church.  I was intrigued and eventually joined the team.  Now I’m the leader of that team and involved in church planting all around the state.

I’m not sharing this story with you to make myself look good.  I’d share your story if I knew it as well as I know my own.  I’m sharing it to show you the common threads of gifts, talents, personality, leadership style and passions that runs through it all.  What common threads did you hear?

Do you see some common threads running through my story?  I see a mixture of these common threads:

  1. Entrepreneurial spirit and impulse
  2. Creativity
  3. Leadership
  4. Passion for justice and the down and out (racial and economic reconciliation)
  5. Double interest in academia (learning and teaching) and practical living (doing)
  6. Calling by God to live out all those things as a pastor of a local church

What are the talents and gifts that run through your life?  How can you use those unique mixture of gifts and talents to serve God by serving your church, community, and world?  Where is God calling you to serve?

Are you ready to grow in your hands-on service to the Lord? Check all that apply.

ð      No, I am not ready at this time.
ð      No, I am not ready yet, but I will be searching for ways that I can serve the Lord.
ð      Yes, I am ready to begin giving one hour each week.
ð      Yes, I am ready to begin giving two hours each week.
ð      Yes, I am ready to begin giving ______ hours each week.
ð      Yes, I am interested in exploring serving in the areas circled on the Serve Sheet.
ð      Yes, I will take the online inventory at www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.
ð      Yes, I am ready to serve weekly/monthly/quarterly in a missions opportunity in the community.
ð      Yes, I am ready to go on a Nicaragua medical mission trip this year.
ð      Yes, I am sensing a call to ordained service.
ð      Service will be a priority in my life, growing to include the following:
I will look for ways to give my time and strength to serve the Lord. I will serve with joy and gladness. When I feel the Lord inviting me to greater levels of sacrifice and service, I will answer, “Yes, Lord, send me.”

 

Serve the Church, Community & World Interest

 

Name:________________________________________________ Contact:____________________________

I am particularly passionate about: _____________________________________________________________

I have these talents/Spiritual Gifts: _____________________________________________________________

Circle the ministries in which you might have an interest in serving or are committed to serving again this year.  Someone from new areas of interest will contact you for further discussion.

Serve the Church: Worship

Band
Worship Leading
Media Team
(lights, sound, presentation)
Communion Servers
Set-up Team
Tear-down Team
Crew Chiefs
Worship Dream Team
Artists
(paint, sculpt, atmosphere, etc.)
Video Production
Preaching
Pastoral Leadership/Ordination
Church in a Diner Team
Next New Venue Launch Team

Serve the Church: Kids Creek*
Set-up Team
Tear-down Team
Registration
Assistant Teachers
Teachers
Worship Leader
Media
Nursery Staff
Nursery Assistant
Special Event Nursery Care
Kids Creek Team
Special Events Help
Summer Kids Creek Teacher 

Serve the Church: StuREV*
Teachers
Event Planners
(retreats, missions, etc.)
Event Chaperones
StuREV Team
Summer Team

Serve the Church: Administration
Finance & Facilities Team
Personnel
(SPR–Staff/Pastor Relations)
Advertising
Bulletin Prep
Office Cleaning
Offering Counters
Office General Help
(mailings, etc.)
Landscape/Gardening
Space Team
(looking for new space)
Capital Campaign
Website Team

Serve the Church: Small Groups
Small Group Leader
Teachers for short-term classes
Small Group Host
Small Group Mission Cor
Prayer Team
Care/Support/Listening Team
Hospital Visits

Serve the Church: Hospitality
Sunday morning leader(s)
Set-up
Tear-down
Special Meals
(Baptism, Vision Mtg, etc.)
Food Prep
Greeters
Ushers
Info Table

Serve the Church in a Diner
Parking Lot Host
Host at the Door
Set-up
Tear-down
Presentation/Media
Offering Usher
Planning Team
Mission Team

Serve the Community:
Small Group Missions
Open Door Ministry
(Day Room for Poor/Homeless)
Holt Senior Care
Maplewood
(Women & Children’s Center)
Compassion Closet
(Personal Needs Bank)
Habitat for Humanity
Driving People to Church
Transition Food Ministry
(Provide meals for families)
Transition Food Ministry Leader 

Serve the World: Nicaragua
($500+ scholarship available!)
Spring Medical Mission Trip
Fall Medical Mission Trip
Weekly/Monthly $ Pledge

Other Serve Ideas
__________________________

__________________________

 

Skills and Stuff
(Listed in Next Directory)
__________________________

__________________________

__________________________

__________________________

__________________________

__________________________

 

*Serving with children or youth requires a screening process which includes being active at SCC at least for six-months, a background check, and possibly references.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: , ,

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performance from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin

November 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Talent Is OverratedTalent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performance from Everybody Else
By Geoff Colvin
Rating: 8 of 10

Colvin, Fortune Magazine’s Senior Editor-at-Large, argues in Talent is Overrated that if there is an in-born talent in geniuses and high-performers, it has not yet been found, and an easier explanation for world-class performance is a very long process of deliberate practice.

Colvin explores several different case studies, but let’s review just one: Mozart, an assumed musical genius.  Mozart was born to a father who was a famous composer and performer, but even more important his father was an expert in musical pedagogy (the art of teaching a subject or discipline).  Mozart’s early compositions are not in his own hand.  His father exercised editorial control over his son’s work and had a keen sense for marketing Mozart.  His compositions during his teenage years are mostly adaptations of other works, a common strategy for teaching composition.  Colvin notes that none of these early works are today considered masterpieces, and Mozart’s first masterpiece didn’t come until the age of twenty-one, after eighteen years of “extremely hard, expert training.”  Colvin adds that Mozart’s supposed claim to see or hear an “almost finished and complete” work in his mind comes from a letter that scholars now consider a forgery.  Based on today’s “precocity index,” a score that describes how fast a “child-prodigy” progresses, Mozart was at a mere 130%, 30% faster than the average student; whereas with the help of today’s training methods, children reach 300-500%.   According to Colvin, Mozart was good, but not as good as we might imagine.  He goes on to explore in similar ways Tiger Woods, Jack Welch, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett among others.

In two key chapters titled “What Deliberate Practice Is and Isn’t” and “How Deliberate Practice Works,” Colvin outlines the path to exceptional performance through deliberate practice.  Here are the key points:

  1. Deliberate practice is designed specifically to improve performance.  It is designed not by the individual doing the practice (unless they have reached the highest levels of performance and are themselves an expert) but by someone who is an expert on the huge field of knowledge that surrounds any given discipline and can pinpoint specific activities of practice in the “learning zone.”  Mozart’s father’s expertise in musical pedagogy is an example.  Or to put it more simply, who is your expert coach?
  2. Deliberate practice can be repeated a lot.  This repetition isn’t just doing the same thing over and over.  It’s doing a particularly hard specific activity pinpointed by a coach in the “learning zone” over and over.
  3. Feedback on results is continuously available.  Measurement is key.  Seeing whether you are accomplishing what you are aiming to accomplish is essential.
  4. Deliberate practice is highly demanding mentally.  This is the difference between mindless practice of easy things and deliberate focus on the tasks that are difficult and mentally challenging.
  5. Deliberate practice isn’t much fun.  Practice, get feedback, and look at what isn’t going well.  Then repeat the aspect that isn’t going well again and again until it is done right.  This kind of practice is focused on what you probably don’t like doing.

Those who engage in deliberate practice end up with several new skills:

  1. They understand the significance of indicators that average performers don’t even notice.
  2. They look further ahead.
  3. They know more from seeing less.
  4. They make finer discriminations than average performers.

Throughout the whole book Colvin points out just how much time deliberate practice takes.  Therefore, if someone wants to be a top-level performer, but only makes that decision later in life, the obstacles are almost insurmountable to have the time to achieve top-level performance.  Their peers who began as children are already thousands of hours ahead of them.  Perhaps this fits well with an idea that Marcus Buckingham, another well-known business consultant, often makes: it is unlikely that we will improve our weakness so we ought to focus instead on our strengths (See The One Thing You Need to Know which makes the argument that they key to sustained success is to find out what you don’t like doing and stop doing it!).

The most obvious application for pastors is in the weekly sermon.  Having an expert communication coach would improve a pastor’s communication skills significantly.  Another idea might be repeating over and over (until “mental exhaustion” as Colvin suggests) one or two parts of the sermon that you really wanted to communicate well instead of the sermon as a whole.  Some less obvious applications would be having an overall leadership coach (Path1 provides just such coaches).  Running through team meeting agendas ahead of time with a coach could be a way of practicing deliberately.

Because I am reviewing this book for our New Church Committee I’d also like to make some observations about how Colvin’s ideas might help us in our big-picture strategy to plant churches and in a new church pastor’s individual strategy to plant a specific church.

New Church Committee

  1. Who is our expert coach giving us continual feedback on our church-planting process?  Our committee has attended the School for Congregational Development, but maybe it would be worth investing in a coach for the committee or the committee chair.
  2. Our own process of planting a church is much slower so how can we take a particular part of the process and repeat it a lot?  We could do that by choosing a particular part of the process and then sitting in on several other conferences’ moments of performing that part of the process (i.e. watch other conferences evaluate prospective candidates).
  3. Benchmarks will be key to continual feedback on results.
  4. For us to do this well, it will be mentally challenging.  Our commitment to planting churches can’t be a side commitment.  It will have to be a full commitment of body, mind, and spirit.  Perhaps members of the committee need to make sure they protect their time commitments so that they have plenty of energy to devote to this mentally challenging task (i.e. being available to attend things like SCD, Church Planting 101, etc.).
  5. We’ve just gone through a couple of processes that weren’t very much fun.  Colvin’s admonition that deliberate practice isn’t much fun should encourage us.  We worked on some areas that we were failing.  That’s part of learning how to do church planting well.

New Church Pastor

  1. An effective new church pastor is probably going to be one that has grown up practicing specific skills that are required to plant a new church.  It is unlikely, according to Colvin, that you can start late in life at acquiring the necessary skills and be very successful at what you are attempting.  This might mean that they grew up or have spent significant time in the culture of a new church.  It also might mean that they have a record of growing or planting churches in the past (or as we have heard over and over again in various settings – a record of having the creativity to start all kinds of new things).
  2. For those who began early, having an expert coach who directs them in specific practices will be key to the success of their church plant.  This coach must be an expert in the field and perhaps even more so, an expert in the pedagogy of coaching and training new church pastors.
  3. Introducing future potential pastors (middle and high school students) and young new pastors early on in their calling to new church ideas and skills will yield more “high-performers” later in life.  Could we create a new church academy specifically for this population or invite middle and high school students to attend a new church academy?

Questions and Conclusion

I have several questions that I must ask about how to integrate Colvin’s ideas with various Christian beliefs.  Over and over again he takes shots at the “divine gift” idea of talent.  Colvin’s ideas are based in research and science.  If excellent performance is mostly the result of a natural training process, then how are we to understand spiritual gifts?  Are spiritual gifts divine aptitudes given by God or are they “divine” results of a lifetime of training?  Our Wesleyan theology of sanctification suggests that we grow both naturally and supernaturally through a process of training the mind and body in certain habits and practices that are means of God’s grace working in our lives.  Are Colvin’s ideas simply an extension of the “natural” side of our theology of sanctification, or do they lack something vital because they discount the idea that God can supernaturally give gifts to specific people whether they have had the right amount of practice or not?  I don’t have the answer to these questions, but I think they are questions we must wrestle with if we are to fully embrace Colvin’s ideas and methodology.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: , , ,